We’ve just released new juicy update of Swift To-Do List, version 7.63. As usual, this update is free for all existing customers. (If you don’t have Swift To-Do List yet, download it now.)

It includes new countdown timer, which is the most interesting new feature, because it allows you to overcome procrastination and resistance to your tasks.

If you learn to utilize the new timer feature as explained below, it can literally change your life, especially if you are struggling with procrastination or have hard time focusing and managing your attention.

As you read on, you will learn how you can benefit from the new timer feature, and how it can help you to focus and overcome procrastination.

Oh, and other than the timer, the new update also adds overdue tasks information in the info panel – with just 1 click, you can immediately see all overdue tasks. The new version can also email task reminders to assigned persons, and it allows you to open a folder where any file attachment is located, and much more.

How to overcome procrastination with the new Timer feature

The new countdown timer expands the existing Time Tracking feature.

Procrastination is caused by resistance. We feel resistance to tasks because the oldest and most primitive part of our brain, amygdala, is feeling threatened. It dreads the work, because it’s uncertain how long will it take or what else will you have to give up to finish it. However, this feeling can be eliminated by setting a time limit for your work session.

For example, to overcome resistance to any particular task, you can say to yourself: “I am going to work just 20 minutes on this task”. Then, start the 20 minute Timer for that task. You will have no problem getting started this way.

This has 4 very significant benefits:

1. First, it eliminates resistance, because it is now obvious that you will be working for just 20 minutes, so the task is no longer perceived as a threat by your primitive part of brain.
2. Second, it sets you free. During the countdown, you don’t have to worry about anything else. It frees you from everything else and gives you the permission to focus absolutely on that task.
3. Once the 20 minutes have passed, you will probably continue working. You will get into flow and you can actually feel euphoric while working!
4. The floating timer window will constantly shift your attention to the task. It acts like a magnet for your focus, which is invaluable in today’s ADD world full of distractions.

As a result, you can easily be 300% more efficient during these 20 minutes than usual. It can be quite revolutionary, actually. I’ve personally gotten some extraordinary results by using a timer, and I know of many others. It is proven. It just works. And it’s very, very effective.

20 minutes is just an example. You can use any time limit, from 5 minutes to 90 minutes. Heck, you can even set any custom number of minutes.

And by the way, if you have trouble focusing, you can also use the new Timer feature in combination with Pomodoro Technique, which is basically about structuring your whole work day in short 25-minute focused bursts and 5 minute breaks.

The Timer is in Ultimate and Professional editions only.

This is how you start it (by right-clicking any task):

And this is how the actual timer looks. On the screenshot below, you can see it on my desktop. It’s a floating window that can be set always on top, and you can of course customize the color and other things by right-clicking it. You can move it anywhere (it’s sticky).

When the time is up, “Finished” will start blinking on the timer, and you can either close it or reset it to start another session. You can also set a new timer with different time limit, for a different task or the same one.

Swift To-Do List keeps track of total time spent on any task when the timer or time tracker is running. If you display Time Spent column in the task-view, you will be able to see how much time have you spent total on each of your tasks.

Other new features

As always, there is also a bunch of other improvements to make you more efficient, productive, and make your life easier. These include:

• Info panel now contains “Overdue Tasks”. You can click that label and see all overdue tasks. The label displays the number of all overdue tasks. This gives you instant overview.
• New calendar mode, “Due Date or Start Date”. This allows you to see tasks starting OR due on any particular day (or days) with just a single click.
• New Filter option for Due Date and Start Date filtering: “In next 14 days”. This is similar to the “In next 7 days” option.
• For added convenience, you can now upgrade your license to a higher edition or purchase extra discounted copies using menu “Help – Buy Upgrades or Extra Licenses”.
• Attachments right-click menu now contains “Open File Location” for file attachments. This allows you to open the folder where the attachment is located. When it comes to embedded attachments, the folder from which they were embedded is opened.
• Email reminders can be now emailed to the person the task is assigned to. The same goes for recurrence notifications.
• Import from Task Coach added.
• You can now choose choose default task Type and default Context for your tasks. Do that using menu File – Options, then go to the New Tasks section.
• When creating a recurring task, the Due Date of the task is set automatically immediately based on the recurrence. E.g. if you create a task to recur in 7 days, its due date will be immediately set to 7 days from now.

Getting the new Swift To-Do List

All you have to do is to download the latest version and install it.

It’s just a few clicks away. Can these few clicks revolutionize the way you work?

PS: You might be also interested in my summary of The Now Habit, which is probably the best book on procrastination.

- By Jiri Novotny+, the obsessed author of the number one to-do list software for Windows, Swift To-Do List. Jiri’s life quest is to become productivity and achievement world-class expert to empower others to achieve their full potential. If you liked this post, then definitely follow this blog on G+.

Related Posts:

• 3 easy techniques to instantly stop procrastinating
• Tasks and oranges
• Using to-do lists efficiently
• What’s New in 7.26: Time tracking! Yes!
• 30-second check: Do you get the maximum from Swift To-Do List?
• How to use Due Dates in your to-do list correctly

Overcome procrastination with new Swift To-Do List is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

Supported email clients include Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, The Bat! and possibly others – please let us know if your email client is not on the list. PocoMail is not supported, as it doesn’t support drag & drop between applications.

Basically, all you have to do is to drag & drop the email message into Swift To-Do List. You can drop it in the Notes panel or Attachments panel.

This video will show you how easy it is to attach an email to a task in Swift To-Do List. (Click “Play”)

You can also drag & drop calendar items and tasks from Outlook the same way.

To learn more about embedded file attachments, see the previous post “Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more“

Related Posts:

• Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more
• Turn emails into tasks – just drag & drop them into Swift To-Do List!
• Coming soon: Attach emails, embed file attachments
• Overcome procrastination with new Swift To-Do List
• New Swift To-Do List 7 Ultimate edition released
• What’s New in 7.25: Import Wizard, better Batch Edit, more

How to attach emails from Outlook to tasks (Video) is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

You can download the new version. As always, this upgrade is free for users of version 7.

Embedded file attachments

You can now store files directly in the Swift To-Do List database (.stdl)! Versions prior to 7.10 supported only shortcut file attachments, that linked to the actual file. Version 7.10 allows you to add both shortcut and embedded attachments. So you can always decide if you want to store the actual file in your database, or just have a shortcut to it.

Embedded file attachments have some advantages over file shortcut attachments:

1. When you copy the database to another computer, the attachments are copied as well, because they are all stored in your database (which is a single .stdl file)
2. When you backup your database, the attachments are backed up as well
3. If you lose the files, you can restore them from your database
4. If your database is encrypted, the embedded attachments are encrypted as well

They also have one disadvantage: They make your database file significantly larger. Although all embedded attachments are automatically compressed, having many embedded attachments can quickly make your database file quite large. That is usually not an issue, unless you have really large attachments.

Clipboard is of course supported: You can copy & paste the embedded attachments just like regular attachments.

Converting file shortcut attachments to embedded file attachments

Adding new embedded attachments is obvious and simple. How about converting existing shortcut attachments to embedded? Well, it’s simple as well!

All you have to do is to right-click the file shortcut attachment, and click “Make Embedded”:

The attachment will be automatically converted to embedded attachment and stored in your database.

Save As (another new feature)

As you can see on the previous screenshot, you can now also right-click any attachment (both embedded and shortcut) and use “Save As”. This allows you to save copies of the files to a specified location. You can even use this for multiple attachments at the same time.

Opening and editing embedded attachments

You can open the embedded attachments just like shortcut attachments. However, there is a significant difference: Because the embedded attachments are stored in the Swift To-Do List database, they must be unpacked into a temporary location first.

When you open an embedded attachment, it will be automatically unpacked into a temporary location and opened from that location. If you then change the file (for example, when you edit a Word document or .txt file), Swift To-Do List will detect the change, and ask you if you want to bring the changes back into the database – if you select Yes, the attachment will be re-embedded into the database and thus updated from the temporary location.

New Options related to attachments

There are two new options related to Attachments, in Options – Notes:

If you check “Embed attachments by default”, all pasted / dropped files will be automatically embedded.

By default, files over 6 MB display a warning about their size. You can disable the warning using the second option.

Attach emails from Outlook, Thunderbird, The Bat! and other email programs

This is extremely useful and exciting new feature. I’m going to write a separate blog post about it. But basically, you can now just drag & drop emails from most email programs into the notes and attachment panels in Swift To-Do List. We’ve tested it with Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, The Bat! and Windows Live Mail. PocoMail unfortunately doesn’t support communication with other programs.

All email messages are added as embedded file attachments, so you can work with them even if you do not have the original email message stored on the computer from which you are running Swift To-Do List.

If you open the attached email message, it will be opened in your default email client.

If you are using Outlook, you can even drag & drop calendar items and Outlook tasks to attach them to your tasks in Swift To-Do List.

We’ve published a blog post about attaching emails that includes a video.

Additional information for advanced PC users

Embedded attachments are super-smart:

Embedded files are automatically compressed. If the file is already compressed, Swift To-Do List will not compress it again, so you don’t have to wait unnecessarily. The detection is based simply on file extensions (eg. Swift To-Do List does not compress embedded mp3 files and zip files, as they are already compressed).

Duplicate attachments are automatically detected, and stored only once in the database. You will still see them attached to the tasks that you attach them to, but the actual data is stored only once. This allows you to quickly copy tasks with attachments, without waiting or worrying about the size of your database.

Also, if you edit one of the duplicate attachments, the changes will be saved only to the attachment that you edited and 2 different files will be stored in the database from that point on.

We’ve decided to put a limit on the maximum size of a single attached file: 240 MB. This is because extremely large attachments could slow the program down.

More new features coming

We are already working on another update with useful new features and improvements.

The most important thing that we are working on is an online synchronization feature, that will allow you to easily synchronize Swift To-Do List between computers with a single click. However, this will take us some time (2-3 months at least).

Related Posts:

• How to attach emails from Outlook to tasks (Video)
• Turn emails into tasks – just drag & drop them into Swift To-Do List!
• Coming soon: Attach emails, embed file attachments
• Overcome procrastination with new Swift To-Do List
• What’s New in 7.25: Import Wizard, better Batch Edit, more
• What’s new in 7.20: Email reminders, hourly recurrence, Task ID column and more!

Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

We are planning to release version 7.10 of Swift To-Do List in about a week. It will come with interesting new features.

Attach emails from Outlook (or other email programs)

Many users have requested this feature, and we listened! You will be finally able to drag & drop emails from Outlook (and other email programs) into task notes/attachments area in Swift To-Do List to attach them. This will store a copy of the email right in the Swift To-Do List database. You will be able to double-click it to open it again in Outlook (or other email program that you use) and reply to it, etc.

But that’s not all! Because we’ve made this feature very flexible, you can also attach calendar items, tasks and contacts from Outlook. You can also attach many different things from various other programs that have good drag & drop support (eg. many Microsoft Office programs, like OneNote).

Embed file attachments (= store files in Swift To-Do List)

Currently, all file attachments are shortcuts only. Therefore, these attachments don’t work if you carry your task database to another computer. Well, the version 7.10 will allow you to store files right in your task database (the .stdl file). This will make it easy to have all the relevant things in one place – tasks, notes, and now files attached to your tasks!

The biggest advantage is that if you carry the database to another computer, you still have the attached files readily available. Also, if you lose the files – you will have their copy in the database.

Other new features

We are also working on many other new features and improvements. I will talk about them later. The most important one is easy online synchronization (coming in 2-3 months). Feel free to send us your feature requests – we are always counting votes to prioritize our work.

Related Posts:

• Coming Soon: New Swift To-Do List 8 with subtasks!
• How to attach emails from Outlook to tasks (Video)
• Swift To-Do List 7.10 released: Embedded file attachments, attach emails to tasks, and more
• Overcome procrastination with new Swift To-Do List
• What’s New in 7.25: Import Wizard, better Batch Edit, more
• What we are up to in 2016: Swift To-Do List 10 is coming

Coming soon: Attach emails, embed file attachments is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog